It makes Clark laugh, just a little, enough for Bruce to feel as much as hear the thrum of it.
"They do have music, actually," he says. "It's a little—well."
He straightens up, relieving the weight of his skull off of Bruce's skull, but arms now draped on broad batshoulders. "Computer, play Threnody-72 of Zistra Va-Rel, please."
And there is music. Long mournful sounding notes from alien instruments—string based, maybe—and the recording of a female voice. Vocalisations are mixed with coherent words, and words are even broken into parts, scattered, ordered. This one is pretty in spite of the strangeness, which might explain why Clark remembers it.
His hand over Clark's shifts to rest against his forearm, shoulders plenty expansive. Enough real estate to comfortably rest all those tracts of Kansan land against.
It is beautiful. In a strange way. Pitches he isn't used to, structures he isn't familiar with; not the sound, but the experience, reminds him of his first explorations on the other side of the globe. Learning languages and learning how to learn languages, getting his brain to accept input from any sound at all. He allows it to wash over him, forcing himself not to take mental notes.
"I can see how a culture might find nothing objectionable about state-coordinate reproduction," he says after a while, once the chamber of the bridge has returned to the standard ambiance of faintly humming equipment, the tiny whiz of his laptop, two people breathing. "Everything flows together. Writing, music, this responsive projection." Sensing Bruce's gaze, the silvery assistant pod shifts in the air near them, its oval 'screen' churning, like it's alive. "Couple of generations of that, and who'd want to make waves?"
Mm, says Clark. They are standing in a ship that is thousands of years old and still runs the same edition of intergalactic Windows that Krypton had going before it exploded. Bruce isn't wrong, in that the answer to rhetorical question would be: no one.
"You'd get bored," he says, after a beat, giving Bruce a squeeze with that arm before finally leaving him in some peace. The squeeze indicates that the figurative you is also you, Bruce.
No one who'd want to and no one who could, anyway.
Anyway. It's still all new and exciting to a Kryptonian raised in Kansas, who posits that maybe there's something useful in the way their songs are written, and volunteers himself into pulling out mathematically quantified sequences with a generous amount of help lent to him by the computer itself. Book smart he is not, but he is quick, given to absorbing and retaining information, sensitively attuned to things like frequency and resonance.
He gets into the second set of sandwiches once he's set the computer on the task of rendering that data down into something Bruce's laptop can crunch, and says, "Is there anything on earth that can do what you want to do? With the atmospheric conditions."
He would get bored, in a bad way. There is no universe out there where Bruce Wayne is anything besides human, with no powers, and no distant planet with a different star waiting to turn him into a god. And that's for the best; just look at the shit he pulls as he is, mortal, wealthy, and with an intellect made by pure coincidence. No one needs to see him crafted into further efficiency through eugenics and left to solve the problem of a planet's imminent demise. Zod would look very tame.
What a thought.
Clark is so brilliant. Bruce can practically see the way he remembers things, and picks apart examples Bruce tosses out, apparently spitballing but truly just seeing what the younger man does with them. It's beautiful, and the language is beautiful, and sitting here with him is compelling in a way he did not prepare himself for.
He doesn't know, after all. Sure, he's done some more general homework, some scouting around the corners of the globe to see if another Lex Luthor (or another Bruce Wayne) is out there plotting how to make a god die (ergh), but this wasn't something he'd considered until today. There's no anxiousness or fear in his expression, just alert curiousity.
Intrigue, too. Building something new, potentially. "Not specifically Kyrptonian," he adds. "But anything with that potential?"
For a split-second, he considered disingenuously thinking on the question - making it look like he hasn't already exhausted the search, and like he hasn't for some time now been prying into the potential for things that could harm Clark. Bruce is aware of what strange ground that might be, for the man who fashioned so many weapons from kryptonite. But, something something, trust. Clark keeps saying he does. So.
"There's nothing naturally occurring on this planet, possibly in this solar system, that can curb you. I would have to engineer it."
Your dad picked well.
"There are two candidate methods. But the reason I want to try to configure a Kryptonian atmosphere chamber first is because the second carries the potential to be very damaging if I build it blind, without data from how you experience that atmo."
Implying that he can just build whatever-it-is blind. Showing his hand a bit, incidentally.
But again, perfectly innocent. Predictably, no piercing distrust, no latent suspicion. Even when Clark Kent, Daily Planet, had squared off with the man he'd as of a few seconds ago discovered to be Batman, there'd been an openness to that glare-off, more of an invitation to disappoint than a scouring attempt to discover something disappointing.
None of that, anyway. Bruce is very smart and it's sexy.
Tuna salad sandwiches, plentiful to balance the moratorium on snack food side dishes (potato chip crumbs? on this hardware?), packed only with some water bottles and cans of Diet Coke. Enough time has passed by now that they won't explode when opened, jostled by the journey, though one is dented. Pressure changes in the flight.
"I would just prefer that you not explode and that I," crack-hiss, hey, still slightly carbonated, even, "do not immediately get leukemia."
But banter isn't released without a slanted look through eyelashes as Clark likewise reaches for a Diet Coke. Bruce, please. The tab is peeled free, the carbonation activates, and talking about this feels a little like he is circling something. A couple things, even.
"You said the chamber might make you sick," he prompts, as he brings can up to mouth to drink from, eyebrows querying.
Mild-mannered journalist Clark Kent. Less so, that m-word. Angling towards the point with his callbacks and questions, digging at a story. Bruce might tell him to cough it up if he didn't find him doing his job attractive (don't unpack that).
"Like it made you sick."
But not, Like it allegedly would have killed Lois, who was given a nifty space hat.
"Sort of. You can adjust. I might not be able to, even if I tweak things. At first, anyway. It's not about the danger of the atmosphere itself the methods used to achieve it. What it looks like, to me, is that the kind of generators - for lack of a better word - used to maintain a Kryptonian liveable atmo on the Phantom Drive ship are not compatible with humans. Or beings from a lot of worlds. You're very good at accepting extreme radiation, no matter the type. I need to look into a... ecologically friendly wind turbine alternative."
He drinks some north pole frozen soda.
"Shellfish."
Ok?
"They do really well with radiation. It's why the fishing market near the wreck has changed like that."
A subtle glimmer of amusement in there. Cool shellfish fact, Bruce. To his credit, Bruce talks about generators and atmospheric conditions and Kryptonian ships and he has Clark's undivided attention, a head-cocked alertness that hasn't gotten old yet, at least not on Clark's side of the conversation. He's never needed to be the smartest person in the room. Or the anythingest person.
"Well, if we can figure it out, and if it doesn't give you a massive radioactive hangover the whole time, it'd be nice to be on a level playing field for a little while. Maybe not only in a strictly professional capacity."
If that's too soon of an angle to pursue, then you'll forgive him for already thinking about it on the plane ride over. Or while they were packing tuna salad sandwiches, even.
This is not actually being overly smart - this is having unprecedented access with which to draw conclusions - the smartness comes later, when he actually does the thing. But if Clark would like to find his application of crabs deal with radiation okay enticing enough to open the door to that sort of talk, Bruce will not dissuade him.
"Mmhm."
As if Clark were talking about the weather. Bruce doesn't actually like Diet Coke; this was a tactical decision, back when they were packing said sandwiches. Counter-balance to tunafish. At least it wasn't egg salad. Would Jor-El forgive him, he wonders, for balancing a soda can on a sleek and silver console's edge as he stands and moves to kiss his son. Probably. Fucking for freedom.
It's a surprise and it's not a surprise, the kiss, when it happens, that it happens. Clark's hands do that thing where they automatic drift up to touch Bruce and rest in place, light and gentle, as is the way he returns the kiss.
A smile interrupting it, inevitably. Out the corner of his eye, he notes one of the androids drifting circuitously nearer. Maybe just randomly, maybe its considering relocating that coke can somewhere less offensive. Clark would doubt dad minding much, although that's not his wondering right this minute.
He'd had an argument with Selina, some years ago. About how he never reached for her, and waited for her to push, every single time. She was furious at him. You'll force an issue for everything, to defeat someone, to help someone, but you'll never take anything for yourself, like you're ashamed.
They both knew he was ashamed of himself, but after years of it, she just felt like he was ashamed of her. I want to be wanted, too.
Bruce took note. It's difficult, still. But he reached out so often in violence, at the start, that—
He's trying. Things that are important to him. And he likes Clark's mouth under his. He doesn't let it linger, though, slipping away almost coyly.
Maybe so.
"I'm nothing if not thorough." He's run all the numbers. Soda can retrieved in rough fingers, he observes the oval assistant floating by, probably scanning the negative nutritional benefit of carbonated cancer water. "And I miss it, too."
That thing they don't talk about out loud, most of the time.
It. That thing. He's talked to Lois about it, a little bit. Trying to walk a line between honesty with his wife and privacy on Bruce's end of things, in the same way he would not unearth details at random about his sex life with Lo. Even without that balance, it's a hard thing to describe in words.
Without sounding completely crazy, anyway. It's nice when it can just be it.
His hand lingers on Bruce as he slides away (far too nimble footed for a man of his proportions), affection shaped in the corners of Clark's mouth. For the kiss. For missing it, too.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
"They do have music, actually," he says. "It's a little—well."
He straightens up, relieving the weight of his skull off of Bruce's skull, but arms now draped on broad batshoulders. "Computer, play Threnody-72 of Zistra Va-Rel, please."
And there is music. Long mournful sounding notes from alien instruments—string based, maybe—and the recording of a female voice. Vocalisations are mixed with coherent words, and words are even broken into parts, scattered, ordered. This one is pretty in spite of the strangeness, which might explain why Clark remembers it.
no subject
It is beautiful. In a strange way. Pitches he isn't used to, structures he isn't familiar with; not the sound, but the experience, reminds him of his first explorations on the other side of the globe. Learning languages and learning how to learn languages, getting his brain to accept input from any sound at all. He allows it to wash over him, forcing himself not to take mental notes.
"I can see how a culture might find nothing objectionable about state-coordinate reproduction," he says after a while, once the chamber of the bridge has returned to the standard ambiance of faintly humming equipment, the tiny whiz of his laptop, two people breathing. "Everything flows together. Writing, music, this responsive projection." Sensing Bruce's gaze, the silvery assistant pod shifts in the air near them, its oval 'screen' churning, like it's alive. "Couple of generations of that, and who'd want to make waves?"
Everything in its place.
no subject
"You'd get bored," he says, after a beat, giving Bruce a squeeze with that arm before finally leaving him in some peace. The squeeze indicates that the figurative you is also you, Bruce.
No one who'd want to and no one who could, anyway.
Anyway. It's still all new and exciting to a Kryptonian raised in Kansas, who posits that maybe there's something useful in the way their songs are written, and volunteers himself into pulling out mathematically quantified sequences with a generous amount of help lent to him by the computer itself. Book smart he is not, but he is quick, given to absorbing and retaining information, sensitively attuned to things like frequency and resonance.
He gets into the second set of sandwiches once he's set the computer on the task of rendering that data down into something Bruce's laptop can crunch, and says, "Is there anything on earth that can do what you want to do? With the atmospheric conditions."
no subject
He would get bored, in a bad way. There is no universe out there where Bruce Wayne is anything besides human, with no powers, and no distant planet with a different star waiting to turn him into a god. And that's for the best; just look at the shit he pulls as he is, mortal, wealthy, and with an intellect made by pure coincidence. No one needs to see him crafted into further efficiency through eugenics and left to solve the problem of a planet's imminent demise. Zod would look very tame.
What a thought.
Clark is so brilliant. Bruce can practically see the way he remembers things, and picks apart examples Bruce tosses out, apparently spitballing but truly just seeing what the younger man does with them. It's beautiful, and the language is beautiful, and sitting here with him is compelling in a way he did not prepare himself for.
If I told myself five years ago, that—
"Making 'red' radiation?" Query.
no subject
He doesn't know, after all. Sure, he's done some more general homework, some scouting around the corners of the globe to see if another Lex Luthor (or another Bruce Wayne) is out there plotting how to make a god die (ergh), but this wasn't something he'd considered until today. There's no anxiousness or fear in his expression, just alert curiousity.
Intrigue, too. Building something new, potentially. "Not specifically Kyrptonian," he adds. "But anything with that potential?"
no subject
For a split-second, he considered disingenuously thinking on the question - making it look like he hasn't already exhausted the search, and like he hasn't for some time now been prying into the potential for things that could harm Clark. Bruce is aware of what strange ground that might be, for the man who fashioned so many weapons from kryptonite. But, something something, trust. Clark keeps saying he does. So.
"There's nothing naturally occurring on this planet, possibly in this solar system, that can curb you. I would have to engineer it."
Your dad picked well.
"There are two candidate methods. But the reason I want to try to configure a Kryptonian atmosphere chamber first is because the second carries the potential to be very damaging if I build it blind, without data from how you experience that atmo."
Implying that he can just build whatever-it-is blind. Showing his hand a bit, incidentally.
no subject
Like Clark wasn't gonna ask.
But again, perfectly innocent. Predictably, no piercing distrust, no latent suspicion. Even when Clark Kent, Daily Planet, had squared off with the man he'd as of a few seconds ago discovered to be Batman, there'd been an openness to that glare-off, more of an invitation to disappoint than a scouring attempt to discover something disappointing.
None of that, anyway. Bruce is very smart and it's sexy.
no subject
Like Clark wasn't gonna ask.
Tuna salad sandwiches, plentiful to balance the moratorium on snack food side dishes (potato chip crumbs? on this hardware?), packed only with some water bottles and cans of Diet Coke. Enough time has passed by now that they won't explode when opened, jostled by the journey, though one is dented. Pressure changes in the flight.
"I would just prefer that you not explode and that I," crack-hiss, hey, still slightly carbonated, even, "do not immediately get leukemia."
no subject
But banter isn't released without a slanted look through eyelashes as Clark likewise reaches for a Diet Coke. Bruce, please. The tab is peeled free, the carbonation activates, and talking about this feels a little like he is circling something. A couple things, even.
"You said the chamber might make you sick," he prompts, as he brings can up to mouth to drink from, eyebrows querying.
no subject
"Like it made you sick."
But not, Like it allegedly would have killed Lois, who was given a nifty space hat.
"Sort of. You can adjust. I might not be able to, even if I tweak things. At first, anyway. It's not about the danger of the atmosphere itself the methods used to achieve it. What it looks like, to me, is that the kind of generators - for lack of a better word - used to maintain a Kryptonian liveable atmo on the Phantom Drive ship are not compatible with humans. Or beings from a lot of worlds. You're very good at accepting extreme radiation, no matter the type. I need to look into a... ecologically friendly wind turbine alternative."
He drinks some north pole frozen soda.
"Shellfish."
Ok?
"They do really well with radiation. It's why the fishing market near the wreck has changed like that."
no subject
A subtle glimmer of amusement in there. Cool shellfish fact, Bruce. To his credit, Bruce talks about generators and atmospheric conditions and Kryptonian ships and he has Clark's undivided attention, a head-cocked alertness that hasn't gotten old yet, at least not on Clark's side of the conversation. He's never needed to be the smartest person in the room. Or the anythingest person.
"Well, if we can figure it out, and if it doesn't give you a massive radioactive hangover the whole time, it'd be nice to be on a level playing field for a little while. Maybe not only in a strictly professional capacity."
If that's too soon of an angle to pursue, then you'll forgive him for already thinking about it on the plane ride over. Or while they were packing tuna salad sandwiches, even.
no subject
"Mmhm."
As if Clark were talking about the weather. Bruce doesn't actually like Diet Coke; this was a tactical decision, back when they were packing said sandwiches. Counter-balance to tunafish. At least it wasn't egg salad. Would Jor-El forgive him, he wonders, for balancing a soda can on a sleek and silver console's edge as he stands and moves to kiss his son. Probably. Fucking for freedom.
no subject
A smile interrupting it, inevitably. Out the corner of his eye, he notes one of the androids drifting circuitously nearer. Maybe just randomly, maybe its considering relocating that coke can somewhere less offensive. Clark would doubt dad minding much, although that's not his wondering right this minute.
"So you ran those numbers too," he says.
no subject
They both knew he was ashamed of himself, but after years of it, she just felt like he was ashamed of her. I want to be wanted, too.
Bruce took note. It's difficult, still. But he reached out so often in violence, at the start, that—
He's trying. Things that are important to him. And he likes Clark's mouth under his. He doesn't let it linger, though, slipping away almost coyly.
Maybe so.
"I'm nothing if not thorough." He's run all the numbers. Soda can retrieved in rough fingers, he observes the oval assistant floating by, probably scanning the negative nutritional benefit of carbonated cancer water. "And I miss it, too."
That thing they don't talk about out loud, most of the time.
no subject
Without sounding completely crazy, anyway. It's nice when it can just be it.
His hand lingers on Bruce as he slides away (far too nimble footed for a man of his proportions), affection shaped in the corners of Clark's mouth. For the kiss. For missing it, too.